I think my GPU is frying (on bootup this morning, after the windows start screen, all I got were white lines and jaggies--but I could hear the windows chimes and some auto-launch programs starting).

So I'm going to have to replace it and my 460 is out of warranty, but I'm pretty busted atm. I'm looking for a good GPU in the 125-175 dollar range. Currently I'm leaning towards like a 6850 or maybe a 7770 on the lower end? I only game at 1680x1050 so I don't need an ubercard. Hell, if I could get away with a 99 dollar card and still play my games well that'd be fine too.

Ugly people have sex all the time. We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion humans if you had to be beautiful to get laid.

Looks like the GTX 560 recommended as an Econobox alternative is up in the raw price ($175 instead of $165), but a $30 rebate gets you back down to $145. Might still be overkill at 1680x1050, but it would be a more direct replacement for your 460, and TR recommended it because EVGA strapped a 3-year warranty on it. Thought that might be good if you're replacing a broken GPU.

"A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. LLAP"

A 6850 or 7770 is going to offer roughly the same performance as your current 460. You could get away with either. A 7770 Ghz Edition would be a good choice if you want AMD. As Jawes said above, a 560 is also a good choice.

Performance has honestly been fine for me, until this So I'll probably be OK with those and go with what I can get cheap. I'm not gaming as much as I used to anyway. Unless something happens between now and Oct 1st anyway.

Ugly people have sex all the time. We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion humans if you had to be beautiful to get laid.

I would also agree that the next tier up gives you a better experience per dollar, but if you are definitely on a budget, then I'd go with a bargain-basement, special-offer HD6850:

The 6850 feels quite a bit faster than a 1GB 460, though some TWIMTBP games were marred by a less consistent experience; Higher average FPS but I think the minimum framerate dips were still as low, which seemed more apparent given the overall improvement in fluidity. Borderlands was the most obvious case of this but I noticed it a bit in Arkham Asylum too. Nonetheless, you can get 6850's everywhere for about $120 with rebates and you might find one for under $100 with a bit of digging.

I also had a chance to try a 7750 in my HTPC with the aim of replacing an old and hot 768MB 460, but it was a big step backwards - not worth me sacrificing the gaming performance just to get a quieter PC.

Some people ask me why I have always enclosed my signature in spoiler tags; There is a good reason for that, but I can't elaborate without giving away the plot twist.

The original 1GB gtx460 and HD6850 are about the same. HD7770 was a little slower at launch than HD6850, but newer drivers have boostedperformance notably. Hardocp found that a mildly OCed xfx 7770 provided the same gameplay experience as both HD6870 and gtx560ti :

If you read the BF3 page, you will see they were able to frag people online on ultra(using fxaa instead of 4xaa, turning off motion blur for bothbetter frame rates and to see their surroundings better, and bumping ambient occlusion down a notch from horizon based to screen space) at1920x1200. The also overclocked it even higher later on. That was with launch drivers. All GCN Architecture cards are faster now than theywere at launch. Also hd7750 is 55w(stock, fits within the PEG slot's power envelope), hd7770 is 80w, gtx550ti is 116w(slower than hd7770 andsimilar nowadays to hd7750), hd6850 is 130w, hd7850 is 130w(stock),gtx460 768 is 150w, hd6870 is 151w, gtx560 is 150w, the original gtx460 1GB is 160w, gtx 560ti is 170w and hd7870 is 175w(gtx650 is 65w and slower than hd7750). Some of the older cards overclock better than others, but all the new 28nm cards oc like crazy. Also, some games are taking advantage of more than 1GB of video ram now, so if you go witha hd7850 get one of the majority with 2GB GDDR5 and not one of the minority with only 1GB. Games using more vram will only become moreprevalent as time passes. Finally, what is your PSU? I wonder if maybe the aging process is making it deliver less power to your gtx460 andcausing your visual problems(depending on the quality of psu and wattage rating/+12volt amps). If that is the case, you may need to look fora card with less wattage like the hd7770. Either that or possibly upgrade to a newer, better psu if you want a more power hungry card.

Oh, yeah. All hd7770s are ghz editons. It was the first reference video card from either nvidia or amd to have all functional units on the gpudie operating at at least 1ghz. And hd7770 was similar to gtx460 768/hd6790 at launch. It's faster now. Any overclocking on your part willincrease power usage. Power use increases linearly with clock speed increases, but exponentially with voltage increases.

Last edited by jtenorj on Thu Sep 20, 2012 4:25 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I'm leaning towards the 7770; I'm on a budget and I don't game as much as I used to so I just don't care enough to drop 200 bucks on a GPU anymore, particularly as most of my games just don't need it on my screen's resolution. *sigh* gotta wait a week. geer.

Ugly people have sex all the time. We wouldn't have 6 and a half billion humans if you had to be beautiful to get laid.

how about a HD6870 for $119.99 before whatever shipping comes out to be? dunno what they charge shipping because they're like 4 miles away from me quick peek at newegg says the hd6870 are around the $170-$190